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Re: [xmca] Collective Experience vs. Individual Experience? (Help, anyone?)



There seems to me to be an important distinction here that is blurred by the
use of terms like 'shared' and 'collective'. On the one hand, there is the experience of crowds, demonstrations, football matches, picket lines, revolutions where the individual through direct participation in collective activity feels part of something bigger than themselves and sheds part of their individuality. Hence the feeling - very real - of being 'swept up in the crowd' doing things you would not normally choose to do as a result of directly feeling oneself part of a collective in action.

This is described in detail from a CHAT perspective in Shah-Shuja's 2008 book 'Zones of Proletarian Development'.

This transformation of subjectivity is distinct from having just shared the same experience such as Tony's earthquake - experience is objectively shared but not necessarily recognised as shared or recognised not acted upon collectively.

The distinction can be understood in Lefebvre's terms as the presence or absence of a social space - not necessarily physical proximity but a medium through which an acting collectivity can form. What is interesting is the creation of such a space as transition from objectively given to subjectively felt shared experience and collectivity.

This can occur very rapidly as the simple result of knowing about others who feel the same way. Andrew Woods (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/opinion/02iht-edwoods02.html?_r=1) refers to a psychological literature on 'pluralistic ignorance' and work of sociologist Hubert O'Gorman. It can also change just as a result of having information about what is going on.

There are classic examples of this in the 'Arab Spring'. Many participants speak of a decisive moment when they overcame their fear and decided to go onto the streets as a result of knowing there were others prepared to do the same. Thus apparent stability can dissolve very quickly once atomisation is overcome and a social space comes about. So while talk of 'Twitter revolutions' is obvious hype, there is a truth in that in CHAT terms the mediating artefact enabled the creation of a collecive with a shared goal.

Exactly how this happened including the subjective processes involved is investigated in the two BBC programmes "How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring" |( http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014l2ck ) which traces the development from the self-immolation of the market trader in Tunisia to the situation in July / August with lots of interviews with key activists.

Bruce Robinson



----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net>
To: <ablunden@mira.net>; "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 6:09 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Collective Experience vs. Individual Experience?
(Help,anyone?)


Ah, I have to correct my error. What is more productive of a "we" than a
shared experience is *doing* something together, a shared project.
andy

Andy Blunden wrote:
I think nothing makes a "we" more effectively than a shared experience,
and yes Mike, I take it that there is very much a temporal dimension
here. It could be as long as "the protest movement of the 60s" or "in the
war," or "growing up in xville," but archetypically, it is Tony's
earthquake - being there on that day.

Andy

mike cole wrote:
That helps, tony. It sent me back to re-read Andy's note.

Andy wrote:

You have an experience, and then you find that everyone else experienced
the
same thing and that event then becomes a central focus of your
collaboration
with other people.

Re-reading reinforces my intuition of the time dimension. "In the
instant"
(which can fell likes hours and even be hours) it is quite localized in
an
individual life. In daily life it comes to known to be shared (we had a
huge
blackout here- similar sequence) and spreads out and across people. In
the
longer run it comes to have a kind of "precipitated" enduring presence
that
shades into collective memory.

(I know, I am prone to threes, but something like this?)
mike

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 9:04 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:


What I mean by "shared experience," as something between individual and
collective experience, is perfectly captured by how Andy characterizes
shared experience. I experience something & find out you and I have
both had
that experience in common, and it has the power Andy describes.

What I mean by collective experience is experience in which the
experience
of others participates in the experience of any one, in the course of
the
experiencing. Temporal aspects are certainly crucial for this.

A single mother who has lost her job in "the great recession" and who
is
worried sick -- literally, to the point of being unable to sleep, and
maybe
even vomiting from stress-induced gastro-whatever -- is experiencing
something somatically in a way that is particular to her own individual
body; but, at the same time, it is not just an individual experience,
like
my experience of the shaking that I realized only after a few seconds
must
be an earthquake. That mother's experience, through and through, is her
involvement in an experience that is irreducibly collective.

Herder is relevant, but not the same -- he's more about culturally
(nationally) accumulated shared experience.

I'm wondering if there's something in the literature of social
phenomenology (Schutz, maybe?).

So, Larry, it's more or less up to people on the list what they will
take
up, and what they will pass by.


On Mon, 19 Sep 2011, mike cole wrote:

 Tony- I am unclear about how your comments point to something between

individual and collective experience.

Yes, the term experience evokes misunderstandings, but have you tried
culture recently as a problem free alternative? :-)

Might temporal aspects of "an experience" play a role in the
individual:collective
distinction? Would that be an avenue to distinguishing an intermediate
process?

mike

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 6:14 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu>
wrote:

 Thanks, Andy, that is helpful.

The Dewey is posted here:
https://tw-curricuwiki.**wikis**paces.com/Dewey--culture%**2C+**
experience<https://tw-**curricuwiki.wikispaces.com/**
Dewey--culture%2C+experience<https://tw-curricuwiki.wikispaces.com/Dewey--culture%2C+experience>
       On Tue, 20 Sep 2011, Andy Blunden wrote:

 Herder, as I understand him, saw collective experience as an
important


facet in the formation of the character of a people. I think part of
the
problem is that "experience" has been such a contested term, Tony.
Generally
it has been co-opted by Empiricism, which is by its nature
individualist
and
by definition the philosophy of experiene, but Dewey used the word
in
formulating his view. But didn't he later say that he regretted
using
the
word "experience" because it led to misunderstandings? Personally, I
think
/shared/ experience is the most powerful force in changing Zeitgeist
and
individual mninds en masse. You have an experience, and then you
find
that
everyone else experienced the same thing and that event then becomes
a
central focus of your collaboration with other people. What could be
more
world-changing?

Andy

Tony Whitson wrote:

 This query is prompted by a new book:

Peck, Don. Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our
Futures
and
What We Can Do About It. New York: Crown Pub., 2011.

http://www.amazon.com/Pinched-****Great-Recession-Narrowed-**<http://www.amazon.com/Pinched-**Great-Recession-Narrowed-**>
Futures/dp/0307886522<http://**www.amazon.com/Pinched-Great-**
Recession-Narrowed-Futures/dp/**0307886522<http://www.amazon.com/Pinched-Great-Recession-Narrowed-Futures/dp/0307886522>
            /

in which the author looks more deeply into predictable
ramifications of
the
current economic situation than I have seen in other recent work.


Based on historical, sociological, and other literatures and modes
of
research, the author argues that what we're dealing with now is not
just
a
wave in a recurring cycle. He predicts lasting changes that he
expects
to
deeply impact different generational cohorts for decades to come.


His argument is plausible, at least, to me. But it prompts me to
wonder
about experience that is really collective experience, as opposed
to
individual experience.


Exposing my ignorance, I realize that I can't think of literature
on
the
nature and structure of collective experience. It seems like there
must
be a
lot; but I can't think of it. It also seems like xmca is a likely
place
to
find people who would be interested, and would know about such
literature
(although it's not on-topic in the current threads).


I'm thinking of my first earthquake experience last month as an
example
of
an individual experience. It was totally unlike anything I'd ever
experienced before, and it took me a few seconds to even recognize
that
an
earthquake is what was happening (we don't have those in Delaware).
I
was
at
my desk, at home, by myself when it happened.
Of course, the experience was mediated after the fact from my
sociocultural
awareness of earthquakes. Still, I think it was an individual
experience
in
the moment, compared with the collective experience that Don Peck
is
writing
about -- an experience of events and developments over time, in
which
the
experience of others participates, throughout, in the experience of
any
one.


I am thinking that there might be something else that could be
called
"shared experience," intermediate between individual and collective
experience.


Does this make any sense? Is this question of interest to anyone?
Or am
I
naïvely wondering about things that have been well developed in the

literature?


I would be interested if anyone has ideas or references to share on
this.

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UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
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"those who fail to reread
 are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
                 -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)


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